


About Loving Stella

by evil_Jy (eviljy)



Category: due South
Genre: F/M, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-25
Updated: 2007-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eviljy/pseuds/evil_Jy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How could a guy go from loving and – yeah – lusting after one woman to definitely lusting after, and maybe even loving another man? How could he do that and not be the least bit unhinged?</p>
            </blockquote>





	About Loving Stella

**Author's Note:**

> Special Warning For All Grammar Whores: these are Ray's thoughts, and even I noticed he's frequent lack of proper grammar and therefor played a bit loose with the grammar rules on purpose.   
> Beta: kaijawest.livejournal.com

One could not rightly claim that Ray Kowalski was sexually inexperienced. Even though Stella had been the first girl he had slept with – he had met her when he was 14 years old after all - and in all the years they had been married he had never once cheated on her. He was that kind of guy that stayed true to his love, no matter how unloved he might feel at times. Afterwards, after the divorce, the divorce that Stella had wanted, not Ray, never him, he had still been deeply in love with her and sleeping with any other woman would have felt like cheating to him. Which was why it had hurt him so damn much every time he saw Stella, _HIS_ ex-wife Stella, lean into another man, _a stranger_ , someone who was not Ray. It was just wrong and had made him want to do many unfavourable things to such a guy, much worse than just to kick him in the head.

But while Stella and he had been together, all those years, they'd had plenty of sex. Because no matter how their relationship might have been at times, the sex, it always had been good. Very good. Since trust, trust as in I trust you not to hurt me, had never been as issue between them, they had enjoyed experimenting a lot. Nothing too kinky, mind you, just a toy here and there, some extras, other surfaces than just the bed or their own house in fact.

So even though he had in all his life only been _intimate_ with one person, with his Stella, you couldn't call him sexually inexperienced without lying through your teeth. One could not call Ray naïve or wet behind his ears.

But where Stella was a woman, Fraser clearly wasn't. Even a blind man would find that out in a matter of seconds and Ray, damn good detective that he was, didn't need so much as seconds to find that defining difference between Stella and Fraser. The woman he loved since he knew what love was and the man he now found himself falling slowly but undeniable for.

Now there was Ray, who had only ever slept with women, one woman, Ray who had never before looked with interest at anything but women – and yeah, _women_ because looking was okay, looking with no touching was not cheating, that simply was _not being dead_.

That had been the old Ray, the one he had become very familiar with over the years, the one he knew and understood.

Who he didn't understand was this new Ray, who looked at his partner, his _work_ partner, his _buddy_ , at _Fraser_ and had thoughts rushing through his head very much like those thoughts he'd had concerning Stella only now with noticeably less curves and much more edges and hard planes.

Tough guy that he was, it still freaked him out a little bit, maybe even a lot. It was not, as one might have assumed, since he was a _freaking cop for goodness sake_ , that he was against the whole man on man thing. He had always been one for the "live and let live" sentiment and no, he was not one of those hypo… _hypo-whatevers_ that only believed in such sayings as long as it didn't touch them. No when he said it and he freaking _meant it_.

So it was not the gay sex that fazed him, well, maybe that too. But not in the way that he thought it was wrong, like _burn on a stake_ wrong or anything. Ray couldn't honestly say that it made him feel sick to think about it, not these days and before…

Well, before _Fraser_ Ray never had so much as thought about gay sex, especially not with Ray being one of two doing said gay sex.

Instead he had been with Stella for _years_ and he had been happy with her, he had never once felt like he was missing something or like sex with her had been wrong in any way. It had been wonderful, it had been freaking _fantastic_ , he had loved it! Loved Stella and had loved having sex with her, lots of sex.

Now he thought he might actually be in love with Fraser, who was not Stella, who was a man, very much like Ray was a man, and Ray, Ray started having thoughts about having sex with Fraser.

How could a guy go from loving and – yeah – lusting after one woman to definitely lusting after, and maybe even loving another man? How could he do that and not be the least bit unhinged?

Though, the really, really strange thing about all this was that the longer Ray thought about it – alone at his apartment, in the GTO next to Fraser, at the station, running after a perp when Ray really should not be distracted with thoughts other than how to catch the guy without having to chase him through half of Chicago and not risking getting shot at or shoved over rooftops – the more he thought about it the more it started to make freaking sense.

Because he was still in love with Stella, always would be, and getting together, doing the horizontal mambo jambo with any woman other than Stella would still feel like cheating, like betraying her. Stella had gone on with her life and didn't think twice about it, was more than just meeting other men for dinner, was definitely meeting them for dinner and _breakfast_ these days. But Stella had never been as obsessed about anything in her life as Ray had been – as Ray was. When he could hold a grudge for years he certainly could hold onto love even longer.

But Fraser was not a woman, could never be Stella and as such could never be a substitute for her. Fraser became something new and altogether different.

Him and Fraser, they hadn't meet when they were still kids, hadn't been growing up together in the same neighbourhood, hadn't gone to the same schools, met with the same kids, they simply didn't have two decades of history between them. No, they only met about a year ago, had even started out with two years of history between Fraser and the real Ray Vecchio like a brick wall standing between them. Not only did they not come from the same neighbourhood, but people might even assume they came from different planets – sometimes Fraser really acted like he wasn't from Earth to begin with. Canada. Pluto. Same difference.

There was just no risk, no matter how serious this thing between them got, that they would start fighting over having kids, over Ray wanting a family and Stella, no, _Fraser_ wanting to pursue a career instead. If things stayed like they were now, with the department and Fraser's whole liaison thing, they wouldn't even have the fight over Ray spending more time with his partner, with his work than with his _wife_. Because Fraser was his partner and where Ray went Fraser followed, or the other way round, didn't matter.

There was of course the uncertainty of Ray's undercover gig and what happened when the real Ray Vecchio came back and wanted his life back. But some gut feeling that Ray couldn't name told him that they would figure it out, find a way to make it work. Because they were a damn good team, Fraser and him.

They _worked_ , they just simply did.

And while his memories of Stella and his new experiences with Fraser were like oil and water, they just didn't mix, in essence it was still the same for Ray: it was about love. It was about that moment when it clicked and everything, they – him and Stella once, him and Fraser now – just fit together.

It was all about love, about always loving Stella, till the day Ray died and about learning to love Fraser and wanting to spend the rest of his life with him.

It also was about the way his whole body started to tingle when Fraser touched Ray skin on skin, just a brush of his hand along Ray's arm. Of wanting to lean into Fraser's warmth, drinking in his presence, wanting to hold onto him and make sure that he would never ever fuckin' dare to leave him, that Fraser would not do what Stella had done to Ray. Because being left behind a second time Ray would – could – not survive.

After Stella, after Fraser, there just would be no options left in the world for Ray.

But that feeling right there, so much like the feeling Ray had had when he'd met Stella, this _her and no one else_ , now _him and no one else_ , was what canned the deal for Ray. Made it true, made him throw caution and fear overboard (well mostly, there was still the matter of _the gay sex that he'd never had before_ ) and just go for it.

 

End.


End file.
